N.Z. MOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 May 1943, Page 3

N.Z. MOSSES

FIVE HUNDRED VARIETIES

INCLUDING WORLD'S LARGEST.

ROTARY CLUB ADDRESS BY MR W. MARTIN.

An informative address on the mosses of New Zealand was given at today’s luncheon meeting of the Masterton Rotary Club by Mr W. Martin. B.Sc., F.R.G.S., of Carterton. Mr Martin is honorary botanist to the New Zealand Plant Preservation Society and the author of “New Zealand Flora.”

“For aught I know,” said Mr Martin, “this may well be the first discourse given in New Zealand to a non-scien-tific audience concerning New Zealand’s wonderful moss flora; but as one of your members has asked for it, the rest of you will have to put up with it 1 .” The lecturer pointed out that, while in these momentous days the topic might seem trivial, such studies, leading to an appreciation of the amazing beauties not alone of form but more particularly of adaptation to environment and of design, served as a refreshing antidote.

New Zealand had some fifteen hundred native flowering plants, but it had an incomparably greater number of non-flowering plants comprising the seaweeds, fungi, lichens, mosses, liverwools, clubmosses and ferns, said Mr Martin. Time permitted a brief discussion of only one of these groups, and the mosses were selected because the lecturer at present was actively engaged in a study of the New Zealand moss flora. “New Zealanders,” ’ he said, “had a penchant for giving impossible names to our plants. The native ‘holly’ was actually a daisy, the asparagus ‘fern’ a lily, the Chatham Island lily a forgetmenot, and the Mt. Cook ‘lily’ a buttercup. In like manner every tiny weed on lawn or bowling green became a ‘moss.’ • If any plant has either flowers, fruit or seed,” said Mr Martin, “it cannot be a moss any more than an asparagus can be either a fern or a ‘sparrow grass.’ Mosses grow from spores, not from seeds, and while a seed can produce but a single plant, one singlecelled moss spore can often produce a colony of mosses just as one spore of a fern may produce a colony of tree ferns. Mr Martin then described the life history of a moss, showing that the moss plant produced not a new moss plant but a spore capsule which in turn reproduced the moss plant. He paid special attention to the marvellous contrivances and adaptations for securing control over the dispersal of the spores, and the control for securing and conserving moisture. Water entered the moss from the air by the leaves, but some water also rose from the soil outside the stem, not through it as in trees. Of New Zealand's five hundred mosses, said Mr Martin, many were exhibited including some of the largest and most beautiful. It was pointed out that New Zealand possessed the largest seaweed, largest lichens, largest mosses, and largest ferns and clubmosses to be found anywhere in the world. Each moss had its selected habitat and though some were not fastidious as to where they grew, others were restricted to one kind of station. Some grew only in running water and some in bogs and swamps, while others thrive on sunbaked walls or footpaths; some lived at sea level, others only on the mountains; some grew on the forest floor, others only on leaves or on the tops of the highest trees; some grew only on limestone, some only on rocks other than limestone; still others lived only in caves, or on excrement, or on bark, or decaying wood, and so forth . The lecturer had mosses six feet long, others almost too small to see. The habits were as varied as the habitats, for some grew in colonies, some in tufts, some in cushions, some in festoons. It was to these last that the eerie elfin forest so often seen on the fringe of the mistbelt was due. Mr Martin pointed out that in common with other .plants and animals, the mosses told a vivid story of New Zealand’s ancient history covering a period of thousands if not millions of years, so that the seemingly trivial was historically of the greatest importance.